


i'll touch every star in the sky

by PuriPuki



Series: blessed be the boys time can't capture [9]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, F/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 13:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8802460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuriPuki/pseuds/PuriPuki
Summary: Nah is only five years old when she grows up. Anya tells her, “You must learn to earn your keep, girl. No one will love a mutant like you unless you're useful.”





	

Anya tells her about her father. She tells her that Gregor was kind, a strong man, who loved her dearly. Anya spins heroic tales about her friend, elaborate war stories stolen from a dead man’s mouth. Anya also tells her about her mother. She tells her that Nowi was eternally young, jubilant, and a child of Tiki, grandchild of Naga. There aren't many stories about her mother, on the account that Anya hardly knew her. Anya tells her that she is a mutant child. An abomination. Something that should not exist. 

 

Nah is only five years old when she grows up. Anya tells her, “You must learn to earn your keep, girl. No one will love a mutant like you unless you're useful.”

 

She takes this to heart. Nah desperately wants to be loved - maybe even just liked - by Anya, so she begins to learn how to sweep the floors. How to cook meals Anya likes. How to clean the windows. How to pluck weeds from the garden. How to mend and wash clothing. How to shop at the market by herself. How to grow fruits in the garden. 

 

Nah becomes very skilled in being a servant by age seven. This coincides with Anya’s marriage to Yakov, and the birth of Anya’s first child, Victoria. 

 

Busy with her own child, Anya becomes reliant on Nah for  _ everything _ . She cooks for them and eats the scraps hours later, after cleaning the dirty dishes and sweeping for the third time in a day. She is responsible for putting Victoria to bed, only when she is fussy, and is always responsible for wiping any mess that the child creates. 

 

Nah wonders if her parents ever had the chance to  tend to her as an infant, if they ever cooed over her like Anya and Yakov do to Victoria. 

 

When Victoria turns one and finally seems to have a grasp on how to use her hands, Nah’s ears are her favorite target. Yakov seems to encourage this, always praising anytime his daughter yanks her pointed ears. She grows her hair out to hide them, but Victoria is unrelenting. 

 

Yakov tells the men in town that he has his own Cinderella, a cute little girl tending to his every need, the perfect slave. Nah fears the day where Anya and Victoria will be out of the house, and she will be left alone with him. Every dawn and dusk, sunrise and sunset, she prays to Naga that she will never be in a situation like that. 

 

(She knows little about her mother, even less about manakete kind, but she knows they have been victims of enslavement and hatred for centuries. Nah is aware of how closely she follows this trend, but finds little comfort in it. She would much rather be on Mount Prism, residing with the last manaketes in Naga’s arms.)

 

When she is nine, word comes of the exalt’s death and the coronation of the newly exalted Princess Lucina. She wants to go and see her, knowing that Lucina is a friend, that their fathers and mothers knew each other. Anya won't let her, and screams at her. Nah screams back, and it quickly dissolves into a shouting match. At first, it is in anger. It quickly turns to fear, as Nah begins to shift forms unintentionally. 

 

She hardly even felt it. Her wings were small still, dusty pink and dark green, but the holes they rip in her dirty shirt anyways. Her nails become pointed, teeth become sharper, voice louder. Her scales hadn't the chance to break through her skin when Yakov lunges at her with a knife, shoving his wife behind him. He thinks he’s protecting his family. Nah understands, she would protect hers with her life if she still had one. 

 

She gets off with a cut that doesn't go deep, and runs towards what she thinks is Ylisstol. 

 

After three days of wandering in the woods in rags and tatters, Nah finds the city and runs towards the castle despite the throbbing pain in her legs. Inigo finds her, almost collapsed on the castle steps, and brings her inside. The few maids who remain, always loyal to the Lowell family, tend to the wounds she gained in the woods. She is bandaged and forced into bed rest to regain strength. 

 

The minute she’s able to, Nah begins her training. 

 

She grows into a strong woman while she lives in the castle. She holds her head high, the shackles of life with Anya behind her, and takes pride in the chunk of green stone she wears around her neck. Every time she transforms, her friends gather around and look at her in awe, praise her skill, and help her train - Gerome is her most frequent sparring partner, knowing that Minerva is a formidable opponent for Nah. 

 

Lucina calls for her one evening, summoning Nah to the study nestled in the lower archives of the castle. She is presented with a small and faded photograph of a tall man and short woman, each with wide smiles. The woman is holding what looks like a swaddled baby, with pointed ears and amber hair and - oh. It's her parents, when she was still an infant. 

 

They look nothing like she imagined. 

 

She keeps the photo and looks at it every night, searching for  _ something  _ to indicate that her parents loved her. She knows that Anya and Yakov smiled so wide when Victoria was born, maybe their smiles are because they're excited. Does Gregor’s arm around Nowi’s waist mean anything? What about the way that they're both focused on the infant in their arms?

 

Nah supposes she’ll never know. What can an orphan ask their dead parents that they don't already know?

 

Shortly before her fourteenth birthday, Lucina brings the news Naga herself has delivered to her; the Awakening is necessary. Collect the gems and Emblem. She travels with Kjelle, who is stern and gracious enough to allow Nah to fly instead of walk, Noire, gentle as the baby deer Yakov once brought home to gut and eat for dinner, and Cynthia, who radiates positivity and keeps the rest of them well scheduled. 

 

They are successful, but Inigo and his team are not. Gerome is furious. The Awakening is no longer an option, but time travel is. Noire is sobbing. Nah herself is close to tears, but steels herself for Noire’s sake. Laurent breaks up the argument Gerome and Inigo are quickly devolving into fairly fast, just in time for Yarne to hear the quake that rumbles under them. 

 

There’s no time to mull it over, the Risen are here and it is time to fight.

 

She fights alongside Laurent, trying to prevent any more Risen from entering the village, while Brady and Owain search for survivors. Nah takes her dragonstone in hand, transforms, and heaves frozen fire at the attacking Risen. She can feel the exhaustion set in quickly, she’s drawing too much power from the stone, but she keeps going. There is fighting to be done.

 

When she wakes, Kjelle is sobbing. Even though her vision is blurred from exhaustion, the fat tears rolling down her face are obvious. 

 

“It’s not your fault,” she whispers, voice hoarse, “Don’t cry, it’s not your fault, Kjelle”

 

She’s in and out of consciousness for the next few hours, Brady tells her this after she wakes and stays awake for more than five minutes. Noire and Cynthia sit with her through the night, keeping her company while she recovers - Brady has left her strict instructions to make sure that she drinks and eats regularly through the night, meant to help her regain her strength. There’s really only one thing that she can think to say;

 

“I don’t know if I want to go back.” Cynthia is silent for a moment, and Nah knows that the other girl really does want to go back, she knows how much Cynthia misses her parents. 

 

“I don’t know, either. We wouldn’t be leaving any people behind, but… our whole lives are here.” Noire mumbles, fiddling with her fingers. 

 

“What if they don’t love me?” Cynthia asks abruptly, eyes downcast. “What if… What if they don’t think I’m a good hero?”

 

Nah smiles as much as she can, and says, “Would that stop you from being a hero? Whatever you say to that, you have your answer.” Cynthia beams at that, and plans to become the most heroic pegasus knight ever come tumbling out of her mouth. She’s halfway into what she’ll do to restore peace between Plegia and Ylisse when she cuts herself short.

 

“Wait. What about you two?”

 

“I think the answer is quite clear. We’re going, happily.” Nah tells her, “Hopefully, so will the others.”

 

The gateway to the past is cold and unforgiving. She almost loses the photograph of her parents. Nah weeps when she lands and finds the slip of paper still in her bag.

 

She lands outside of an old and eerie looking mansion, in what has to be Northern Ylisse or Ferox, surrounded by thick pine woods and snow-covered treetops. The front door is open by just a sliver, but it’s a start for her; even though her blood runs fire hot, the cold is her worst enemy, second only to Grima. But, just her luck, the mansion is filled to the brim with Risen.

 

Great.

 

Again, just her luck, the Shepherds arrive shortly after she does. She only recognizes the short woman who comes to her rescue because she’s seen it so many times in photographs,

 

“Nowi?”

 

And she looks confused, almost startled by her, but moves the conversation along like nothing had happened. Nowi is far more light-hearted and jubilant than Anya’s tales had prepared her for. Nowi tells her that her friends can protect her. Nah agrees to go with her, of course, knowing what her mother doesn’t.

 

Even in battle, Nowi radiates happiness and excitement. She flips in the air after a particularly well landed hit, trilling the notes to a soldier’s song. Nah takes notice of the man who fights at their side, tall and broad shouldered, a booming voice and auburn hair. So, these are her parents. 

 

They’re not what she expected, at all. She doesn’t understand why Gregor puts up with Nowi all the time, or why Nowi acts so childish, or  _ why  _ they try to coddle her as if she’s really theirs. Nah knows that she isn’t their child, not really, they haven’t had their baby girl yet. 

 

Nah learns many things from the Shepherds. She learns how to sing silly drinking songs, even if she doesn’t drink any of the mead herself. How to march in formation, even though they hardly ever actually march that way. How much her mother and father love each other. How much her mother and father love her. How to fly faster. How much damage she’s been doing to herself by abusing her dragonstone. How much longer she’ll live than her family - because at this point, all of the other children are her brothers and sisters. How kind the world can be. How calming it is to sit around a fire late at night and stare at the stars

 

Her mother tells her one night, “Did you know that I used to want to touch the stars?”

 

“You don’t want to anymore?” Nah asks, puzzled by the abrupt question. Nowi shakes her head, still gazing upwards. “Why not?”

 

“Dunno. Seems silly now, but someone I once knew told me that I’d have a long time to look at the stars. Doesn’t seem as fun, anymore, trying to touch ‘em.”

 

Nah reaches over and takes her mother’s hand in hers.

  
“I’ll touch the stars for you.”


End file.
